Three days later, Adrian Blackstone sat in my copper extraction chair like a man preparing for surgery. His expensive suit jacket hung on the back of my office chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up to expose the neural interface ports that every modern businessperson had installed. His hands gripped the armrests tight enough to turn his knuckles white.
"You're sure this is safe?" he asked for the third time.
"Memory implantation is safer than extraction." I adjusted the neural crown above his head, checking the connections. "Your brain will accept new memories more easily than it gives up old ones. Evolution designed us to accumulate experiences, not lose them."
What I didn't mention was that the memories I was about to feed him were a carefully crafted blend of truth and fiction. Real Elena memories I'd pulled from my own mind, mixed with fabricated scenarios designed to make him trust me. It was the most dangerous con I'd ever attempted.
"Tell me again how you acquired these," Adrian said.
"Professional secret." I moved to my control console, a modified memory processing unit that Maya had enhanced far beyond legal specifications. "Let's just say Elena Hayes had more friends in the underground than you might expect."
"Friends who would sell her memories to strangers?"
"Friends who understand that the dead don't need their secrets anymore." I pulled up the first memory file on my screen—a fabricated conversation between Elena and a fictional contact, discussing her investigation. "But the living sometimes do."
Adrian closed his eyes, his breathing carefully controlled. "What am I going to see?"
"A meeting between Elena and one of her sources. Two weeks before she died." I paused for effect. "She was scared, Adrian. Scared of what she'd found."
His jaw tightened. "What kind of scared?"
"The kind that gets investigators killed." I initiated the memory sequence. "Hold still. This might feel intense."
The neural crown hummed to life, its sixty-hertz frequency filling the room. I watched Adrian's face as the first memory took hold, his expression shifting from tension to wonder to something that looked like pain.
In the fabricated memory, Elena sat in a coffee shop, speaking quietly to an invented source about corruption in high places. I'd crafted it carefully, using Elena's real mannerisms and speech patterns that I remembered from our shared childhood, but placing her in a scenario that would make Adrian feel protective and suspicious of the right people.
"She's beautiful," Adrian whispered, his eyes still closed.
The words hit me like a physical blow. He was seeing my sister through the neural interface, experiencing my fabricated version of her as if she were alive in the room with him. The tenderness in his voice made my chest tight.
"She's talking about the Blackstone Corporation," Adrian continued, his voice growing strained. "She's saying... she's saying someone in my family is involved in something terrible."
Perfect. The memory was working exactly as I'd planned.
But then Adrian's breathing became irregular, his hands starting to shake. "No, that's not... she didn't say it like that."
My finger hovered over the emergency stop button. "Adrian? Are you okay?"
"She came to me," he said, his voice breaking. "Before she died, Elena came to my office. She tried to warn me about something, but I didn't... I didn't listen."
This wasn't part of my fabricated memory. This was real—a genuine recollection triggered by the false scenario I'd created.
"What did she warn you about?" I kept my voice clinical, professional, even as my heart raced.
"My stepmother." The words came out strangled. "Elena said Victoria was involved in something illegal. Something involving missing people and stolen memories. But I thought she was just... I thought it was professional paranoia."
Victoria. Elena had suspected Adrian's stepmother.
"What did you tell Elena when she came to you?" I asked.
"I told her she was wrong." Adrian's face contorted with anguish. "I told her my family would never be involved in anything like that. I was angry with her for even suggesting it."
"And then?"
"And then she left. She said... she said she'd prove it to me, even if it killed her." His voice cracked on the last word. "Jesus, she actually said 'even if it kills me.'"
I stopped the memory implantation, watching as Adrian opened his eyes. They were red-rimmed, haunted. The neural crown lifted automatically, but he made no move to get up.
"She loved you," I said quietly. "In that memory, I could see it. Even though she was scared, even though she was investigating your family, she still loved you."
"I loved her too." He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, a gesture so vulnerable it made me want to comfort him. "I was an idiot. I should have listened to her."
"You couldn't have known—"
"I could have saved her." He stood up abruptly, pacing to my window. "If I'd just listened, if I'd taken her seriously, she might still be alive."
I watched him struggle with his guilt, and for a moment, I forgot that he was supposed to be my enemy. In that moment, he was just a man destroyed by losing someone he loved—someone I'd loved too.
"The memory you just experienced," I said carefully. "It mentioned Victoria Blackstone specifically. What do you know about your stepmother's business dealings?"
Adrian turned from the window, his expression guarded. "Victoria runs the legitimate side of our memory ventures. Medical research, therapeutic applications. Nothing illegal."
"But?"
"But Elena wouldn't have accused her without cause. Elena was... she was careful about her investigations. Thorough."
"So you think there might be something to her suspicions?"
"I think my sister died because she found something someone wanted buried." He walked back to the chair, reaching for his suit jacket. "The question is whether Victoria is involved, or whether she's just another potential victim."
Sister. Elena had been like a sister to him, not a lover. The realization shifted something in my understanding of their relationship, though I couldn't yet figure out what it meant.
"There are more memories," I said. "Other meetings, other conversations. Things Elena discovered in the days before her death."
"How many more?"
"Enough to keep us busy for weeks. But Adrian..." I paused, letting concern color my voice. "Some of these memories are disturbing. Elena was investigating something much bigger than corporate fraud. Are you sure you want to know what she found?"
"I need to know." His voice was steady now, resolved. "Whatever it costs, whatever it takes to understand what happened to her."
"It'll cost more than money. Some knowledge can't be unknown once you have it."
"Then I'll learn to live with the knowledge."
I walked to my safe and pulled out two more memory chips—blanks that I would need to fill with carefully crafted experiences over the next few days. "These contain Elena's final investigations. The last conversations she had before her death."
"When can we do the next implantation?"
"Tomorrow night. Your brain needs time to process what you just experienced." I held up one of the chips, letting it catch the light. "But Adrian, I need you to promise me something."
"What?"
"Don't go digging into Victoria's business on your own. If Elena was right, if your stepmother really is involved in something dangerous, then investigating her openly could get you killed."
His laugh was bitter. "Are you worried about my safety, or your payment?"
"Both." It was the truth, though not for the reasons he thought. "Dead clients don't pay their bills."
"Fair enough." He put on his jacket, straightening his tie. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Same time."
After he left, I sat alone in my clinic, staring at the blank memory chips. Tomorrow night, I would feed Adrian more carefully crafted lies about Elena's investigation. I would make him fall deeper into my web of deception while I mined his reactions for information about Elena's death.
But his revelation about Victoria Blackstone changed everything. If Elena had specifically suspected Adrian's stepmother, then Victoria was my real target. Adrian wasn't Elena's killer—he was another one of her potential victims.
I called Maya.
"I need everything you can find on Victoria Blackstone," I said when she picked up.
"Medical background, charitable work, society pages—already on it. But Luna, what happened during the memory session?"
"Adrian didn't kill Elena. But I think his stepmother might have."
Maya was quiet for a moment. "That's... actually worse."
"Why?"
"Because killing one investigator could be personal. But if Victoria Blackstone is systematically eliminating people who get too close to something, then we're dealing with someone who kills as easily as breathing."
"Then we need to be smarter than Elena was."
"What's the plan?"
I looked at Adrian's business card, still sitting on my desk where he'd left it three days ago. "I'm going to get closer to Adrian. Make him trust me completely. And then I'm going to use that trust to get inside the Blackstone family and find out what Victoria is hiding."
"That's dangerous."
"Elena tried to warn Adrian about Victoria from the outside, and it got her killed. I'm going to expose Victoria from the inside."
"And if Adrian figures out who you really are?"
"Then I'll deal with that when it happens." I walked to the window, looking out at the neon-lit street. "But Maya, there's something else. Adrian really loved Elena. I could see it in his face, hear it in his voice. Whatever happened between them, his feelings were real."
"Does that change anything?"
I thought about the pain in Adrian's eyes, the way his voice broke when he talked about not listening to Elena's warnings. "It changes everything. Because it means I might be falling for a man who's grieving my dead sister."
"Luna—"
"I know how it sounds. But being with him, seeing his memories, feeling his emotions... it's like Elena is still alive somehow. Like part of her exists in his memories of her."
"That's not Elena. That's your own grief talking."
"Maybe. Or maybe Elena left a part of herself in everyone who loved her, and Adrian Blackstone loved her more than I realized."
I hung up before Maya could point out how dangerous that kind of thinking was. But as I looked at the memory chips I would fill with false experiences tomorrow, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was playing with fire in more ways than one.
Elena had died trying to expose Victoria Blackstone. Now I was going to finish what she'd started, using her grieving almost-lover as my way into the family that had killed her.
The only question was whether I could maintain my deception long enough to get justice, or whether Adrian Blackstone would discover my identity before I could destroy the woman who'd murdered my sister.
Either way, tomorrow night I would feed him more lies about Elena, and watch him fall deeper under my spell. The fact that I was falling under his spell too was a complication I'd have to manage.
But Elena deserved justice, even if getting it meant sacrificing my own heart in the process.
I spent the next two hours crafting the perfect memory to implant tomorrow—a scene where Elena discovers evidence of Victoria's crimes but realizes she's in too deep to escape safely. It would be heartbreaking and terrifying, and it would make Adrian more determined than ever to uncover the truth.
What I didn't anticipate was that creating false memories of my dead sister would feel like bringing her back to life, or that watching Adrian experience those memories would feel like falling in love with his love for her.
But that was tomorrow's problem. Tonight, I had justice to plan and lies to perfect.
Elena had always been the brave one, the one who asked the hard questions and demanded the truth. Now it was my turn to be brave, even if it meant deceiving the one person who might understand my grief.
The memory business had taught me that love and lies were often indistinguishable. Tomorrow night, I would put that lesson to the ultimate test.